Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[HeliKopterBen]

Pretty bold claims from Middleton, but I have tried it and it works, at least in a beta phase, not vapor phase or proof of concept phase, but beta phase.  You can trade all tickers that Cypherdoc mentions on here.  

I still don't understand how the tickers are fed into veritaseum to settle the bets. Can you explain that?

Saying "it works" without understanding how it works is short-sighted.

Twice or thrice I tried to find technical documentation (wading through all the promotional crap) and was stifled, so I assumed it is centralized bullshit.

That's my assumption, too... until it's explained how it works and it works in a way I can trust (which I doubt, but I've been wrong before).

If it's Reggie typing in 50000 tickers every hour then there might be no "counterparty risk", but there's plenty of other risk.

EDIT: I PMed him, maybe he'll show up here and explain. If not, it hardens my assumption.

It works from an end-user standpoint, which is more than I've seen from any other project.  Tickers prices are fed through an oracle, which is centralized.  Also, the code is not open source... yet, which i cant blame them for not wanting all their work to just be copied into another system.  In a nutshell, it appears to be blockchain.info 2.0.  The blockchain.info model has proven to work thus far with zero trust issues, but we will just have to wait for more info to become available. 

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[Reggie Middleton]

I believe the block size limit issue is getting critical.  You guys should check out Reggie Middleton's Veritaseum.  Quoting:

Veritaseum uses only bitcoin, and subsists completely on the bitcoin blockchain. It is the only bitcoin wallet system that can trade simple and complex value structures without using non-bitcoin tokens, alt coins, sidechains or alternative blockchains. It can trade the value of over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes, from major exchanges from all around the world. At it’s essence, Veritaseum is a hyper-intelligent Bitcoin wallet “system” that is able to create and interpret smart contracts through the blockchain. It coordinates with an Oracle to gain access to conventional, physical and legacy financial data and information and uses it to price, value, trade and settle OTC, P2P financial instruments - all in BTC.

One more in a long list of efforts built around getting a free ride on the protocol at the expense of others.  They should be being worried about it being ballooned, weakened, and ultimately controlled more than anyone unless they are running some sort of pump-n-dump scam platform or are as dumb as a box of rocks.

Whatever the case, this is a classic example of where a dedicated sidechain could shine.  Reggie and co can make their own determinations about how much engineering and transparency they want to pay for for their VeritaseumCoin sidechain based on the market demand in their segment.  They can also decide how much effort they should be putting into securing Bitcoin core, and I doubt that it would be less than it is today.

Actually, we have contributed to the bitcoin core. In the process of building our system, we found a bug or two. In addition, Veritaseum doesn't bloat the blockchain. Download the client and give it a try. It's a fully functional system and you can see that it runs cleanly.

[Reggie Middleton]

I believe the block size limit issue is getting critical.  You guys should check out Reggie Middleton's Veritaseum.  Quoting:

I still don't understand how the tickers are fed into veritaseum to settle the bets. Can you explain that?

Our server acts as an Oracle feeding commodity ticker data (think Reuters, Google, Bloomberg) into the wallets to adjudicate P&L.

[Reggie Middleton]

Pretty bold claims from Middleton, but I have tried it and it works, at least in a beta phase, not vapor phase or proof of concept phase, but beta phase.  You can trade all tickers that Cypherdoc mentions on here.  

I still don't understand how the tickers are fed into veritaseum to settle the bets. Can you explain that?

Saying "it works" without understanding how it works is short-sighted.

Twice or thrice I tried to find technical documentation (wading through all the promotional crap) and was stifled, so I assumed it is centralized bullshit.

That's not a fair presumption. Most tech dudes (and most people in general) use the financial system and have absolutely no idea how it works. Does that mean that your money doesn't spend? Veritaseum, from a capital perspective, is fully decentralized. It is the only automated system that I know of that is fully autonomous in that you keep your private keys private and on your client under your control. All transactions are peer to peer through the blockchain, and our server doesn't touch, house, hold, custody or control a single satoshi of your coin. Read http://veritaseum.com/index.php/homes/1-blog/128-will-new-vc-investment-trump-the-returns-of-the-early-movers-in-the-digital-currency-space-quite-possibly-let-me-show-you-how and http://veritaseum.com/index.php/homes/1-blog/94-bitcoin-1-0-vs-2-0-or-a-comparison-of-legacy-exchanges-veritaseum-s-ultracoin for the difference between centralized and decentralized systems.
As an aside, the vast majority of bitcoin traders don't seem to have a problem with centralized systems as they freely send their decentralized assets to fully centralized entities to house, trade and exchange. Just a little food for thought.

[Reggie Middleton]

Pretty bold claims from Middleton, but I have tried it and it works, at least in a beta phase, not vapor phase or proof of concept phase, but beta phase.  You can trade all tickers that Cypherdoc mentions on here.  

I still don't understand how the tickers are fed into veritaseum to settle the bets. Can you explain that?

Saying "it works" without understanding how it works is short-sighted.

Twice or thrice I tried to find technical documentation (wading through all the promotional crap) and was stifled, so I assumed it is centralized bullshit.

That's my assumption, too... until it's explained how it works and it works in a way I can trust (which I doubt, but I've been wrong before).

If it's Reggie typing in 50000 tickers every hour then there might be no "counterparty risk", but there's plenty of other risk.

EDIT: I PMed him, maybe he'll show up here and explain. If not, it hardens my assumption.

See slide 14 here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UxB33wp1rCncBtPbuzQbkS1SZg_fjCTNMqu-wZGii-o/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=10000&slide=id.g7b8415063_38

[NewLiberty]

Gresham's Law

It says that bad money drives good money out-of-circulation.

You are advocating we drive BTC out-of-circulation and make it another gold. And inferior form of gold because it has third party risk.

Crypto-currency's strength was never to be an inexorable store-of-value (Satoshi did hook the goldbugs with his mention of inflationless future). It was always about a (speculation on the) synergy of decentralization and commerce being uninhibited (permission-less) and thus freed to grow faster.

I want to fulfill that goal. Bitcoin is about fulfilling the NWO goal (or as you wish dying on the vine as some bastardized gold so you can assert your early adopter ego).

Edit: I am not visualizing Bitcoin as the one-world reserve currency, which will rather be a political power sharing compromise amongst nations with a monetary reset. I see Bitcoin being used to spread digital currency to the masses and force traditional banking and governments into electronic currency (which coincides with the War on Cash). Bitcoin is a clever Trojan horse created and planted by the DEEP STATE to force the move away from cash. They planned this out well. I am impressed.

Great post, until the last three sentences.  Those are speculation.

[NewLiberty]

Veritaseum uses only bitcoin, and subsists completely on the bitcoin blockchain. It is the only bitcoin wallet system that can trade simple and complex value structures without using non-bitcoin tokens, alt coins, sidechains or alternative blockchains. It can trade the value of over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes, from major exchanges from all around the world. At it’s essence, Veritaseum is a hyper-intelligent Bitcoin wallet “system” that is able to create and interpret smart contracts through the blockchain. It coordinates with an Oracle to gain access to conventional, physical and legacy financial data and information and uses it to price, value, trade and settle OTC, P2P financial instruments - all in BTC.

The Veritaseum platform, using nothing but pure bitcoin with no tokens or alternative internal currencies, moves the value of all that he mentioned plus much more (over 45k tickers), with absolutely no counterparty risk on a fully autonomous basis using smart contracts based solely on bitcoin script

It might be worth pointing out in these two posts.

Post 1 - it uses an Oracle
Post 2 - claims no counterparty risk.

A trusted oracle is a 3rd party.  Is this not a form of counterparty risk?

[thezerg]

Mircea and his #BTC-assets brigade has already declared 20mb blocks to be an attack on Bitcoin, so some degree of fireworks/popcorn/tears/LULZ/drama are guaranteed.

Forcing txn fees higher to contain the blockchain bloat would also implode the BTC price because you will destroy the ideological propaganda that caused people to predict much higher BTC prices due to network effects.

You would essentially be relegating Bitcoin to a hobbiest experiment on the virtues of small currencies used by a fraction of the population with that population sparsely distributed over the globe.

This is correct. Can't believe people can't see this. Or  maybe they do but don't care.

The only thing which causes people to infer rising BTC prices in the future is a rising BTC price in the present.  99.99999% of people don't give even a whiff of a fart of a tiny little shit about the "network effect" even assuming they've heard of it (which they haven't).

But that rising BTC price in the present is ultimately supported by people who DO care and DO research and BUY COINS when the price is NOT rising.

Until the UXTO set is able to be pruned and/or otherwise optimized for (sub)linear growth, your starry-eyed fantasies about billions of direct, Metcalfe-empowering BTC users are dead.

Let's buy ourselves 5 years so we can solve the UTXO.

Fortunately, the network effect still works when billions of people indirectly use BTC via altcoins, sidechains, and institutions kept honest by realtime auditing.

Nobody (except possibly Gavin-the-clod) is powerful enough to "relegate Bitcoin to a hobbiest experiment."  That ship has sailed; that horse is out the barn, that toothpaste is out the tube; that goose is cooked.  The Bitcoin cat is out of the bag, and heaven help anyone who tries to put her back in it.   

Bitcoin's "intrinsic value" is its future promise of certain functionality -- functionality that is described in every intro to bitcoin and VC pitch in existence.  This functionality -- hell even the simplest BTC P2P transfer -- does not work with 1MB blocks once the network transactions exceed its capacity consistently.  Even lightning network people calculated that overlay networks DO NOT WORK with 1MB blocks.

This ship is going to hit an iceberg, stop dead in its tracks and start leaking water as soon as the 1MB limit is hit consistently.  But  you are right the cat is out of the bag. For the technology.  The US government, in partnership with major banks, are going to be right there ready to deploy an "decentralized" solution but actually only banks can run full nodes (permission-required decentralized).  And it will trade USD.  And only banks and the govt can issue the "coinbase" txn or see the full blockchain, or allow the creation of new addresses (accounts).

Bitcoin's functional advantage will disappear and it will be reduced exactly to digital gold.  Except there's no reason to hold it vs gold or any other altcoin because you can't fucking transfer it anyway.


The problem with Bitcoin is that so many people didn't get on the train.  So now they hope it will fail so they can board a new train -- Monero, Etherium, whatever.  And they go onto these forums concern trolling as if they are actually Bitcoin proponents.  But suck it up. There is no other train available to you -- the next train will have exclusive membership and will actually be a rocketship (think Apple ipay) deployed simultaneously onto millions of POS, default installation in your phone, automatically connected with checking accounts for several major banks etc.

[HeliKopterBen]

Veritaseum uses only bitcoin, and subsists completely on the bitcoin blockchain. It is the only bitcoin wallet system that can trade simple and complex value structures without using non-bitcoin tokens, alt coins, sidechains or alternative blockchains. It can trade the value of over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes, from major exchanges from all around the world. At it’s essence, Veritaseum is a hyper-intelligent Bitcoin wallet “system” that is able to create and interpret smart contracts through the blockchain. It coordinates with an Oracle to gain access to conventional, physical and legacy financial data and information and uses it to price, value, trade and settle OTC, P2P financial instruments - all in BTC.

The Veritaseum platform, using nothing but pure bitcoin with no tokens or alternative internal currencies, moves the value of all that he mentioned plus much more (over 45k tickers), with absolutely no counterparty risk on a fully autonomous basis using smart contracts based solely on bitcoin script

It might be worth pointing out in these two posts.

Post 1 - it uses an Oracle
Post 2 - claims no counterparty risk.

A trusted oracle is a 3rd party.  Is this not a form of counterparty risk?

Yes I would say it could be considered counterparty risk.  Of course the legacy financial system has counterparty risk throughout, so it is a step in the right direction if the 'catastrophic rollback' works in the event that ticker data were to be compromised and if all funds are truly collateralized by bitcoins and users maintain control of those funds.

[rpietila]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

[sickpig]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

[rpietila]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

Thanks.

Oh ok. I think satoshi indicated that it should be raised, and it's also quite obvious that BTC will not make it to anything more widely used than it is now if it's not raised. Without offchain and centralization. Are there other arguments from the pro-raisers I have missed?

[sickpig]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

Thanks.

Oh ok. I think satoshi indicated that it should be raised, and it's also quite obvious that BTC will not make it to anything more widely used than it is now if it's not raised. Without offchain and centralization. Are there other arguments from the pro-raisers I have missed?

there is another radical view from Justus, see here:

http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-1-scarcity/
http://bitcoinism.liberty.me/economic-fallacies-and-the-block-size-limit-part-2-price-discovery/

to make a long story short: remove the block max size limit completely (b/c it's an artificial scarcity), while at the same time introduce a
price discovery mechanism into full nodes p2p network to determine nodes services prices (e.g. validation, txs relay, ect etc)

[Adrian-x]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

Gavin put it well analysis paralysis, followed by FUD, and the Keynesian notion that a stable monetary system has a constant money velocity.

[cypherdoc]

continuing bleakness:

[Adrian-x]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

All valid reason to keep developing and not accept the 20MB block proposal as a final solution. To attempt solving those problems buy limiting block size is an expression of a lack of creativity

[cypherdoc]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

All valid reason to keep developing and not accept the 20MB block proposal as a final solution. To attempt solving those problems buy limiting block size is an expression of a lack of creativity

the one i keep hearing getting complained about more so now is the one Ice brought up earlier; UTXO.

i don't get that one.  the UTXO is stored on disk and has a 100MB cache stored in RAM that limits filling it up.  yes, the UTXO set is increasing apparently according to Statoshi, but if it only takes up 100MB, what's the big deal?

[sickpig]

Sorry to pose a stupid question: what are the reasons why the limit cannot be raised?

main reasons that opponents to the increase state are:
 
 - centralization
 
 - fees discovery price distortion

 - UTXOs size will increase significantly

 - Tor could not be used anymore

 - other things we don't know yet caused by rising block max size.

All valid reason to keep developing and not accept the 20MB block proposal as a final solution. To attempt solving those problems buy limiting block size is an expression of a lack of creativity

I see Gavin proposal as a stimulus to get a proper debate. And infact this proposal got it started. And imo we're somewaht moving towards a compromise. See last gavin email on btc dev mailing list:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34094753/

[cypherdoc]

In Marketing 101, the chicken-and-egg problem is an example of what to NOT do.

Bitcoin already solved the chicken-and-egg problem.  Have you been in a coma since 2011, when Bitcoin obviously started rapidly taking over the world?  

Because the TPTB used their mainstream media to promote it. Not because as you asserted that eventually users learn to become ideological after the discovery and learning about the evils of fiat.

You are delusional if you assert you are where you are today without the mainstream media and the elite promoting Bitcoin (in their usual Good Cop, Bad Cop hegelian methodology where they both restrict and promote simultaneously as they do for drugs).

You are a noob and so can be forgiven/educated on what actually happened:

E-cash had a widespread ideological following since the days of William Gibson and Extropy magazine (1990s).  Unnoticed, it gestated in the cypherpunk lists...

Decades later, Bitcoin first gained mainstream exposure via the Streisand Effect, when some grandstanding banker-whore Senator (Schumer) held a press conference where his intern or grandson loaded Silk Road up on a laptop to give the press some Shock Horror jollies.

Silk Road worked splendidly as an actual Amazon for drugs, to the delight of thousands of 20-30 somethings who ignore any MSM beyond Daily Show, Gawker, and Conde Naste organs like Reddit and Wired (who mostly regurgitated FUD along the lines of 'Is Bitcoin a Ponzi Scheme for Terrorists?')

TPTB and their VC flunkies came late to the party.  As did you.  It was much cooler before all the lamers showed up...  

you can't call me a noob.  and you probably came after me.

what you're missing is that Bitcoin is money born from the internet, by the internet, and for the internet.  it works on the same principles; it can route around damage.  and a key tenet of it's ability to do that is that it is located widely in different jurisdictions round the globe.  even if the US shutdown the internet, it would survive worldwide and the US would be back groveling in a few days wanting to get back on.  especially after pressure from the financial institutions.  

Bitcoin needs to have the same architecture and be spread worldwide to all corners of the Earth for maximum self preservation.  it can't do that if we hamstring it where it is now with just 1MB.  any idiot can see that.  

you want it to be a SOV.  it has the potential to do that.  but it won't happen if you force all tx's offchain to centralized entities, SC's included, that can shut anyone's acct down.  this requires increasing the block size.  all the core devs "say" they want that but they've been dragging their feet for 3y.

as for digital gold, it won't happen if only 0.001% of the global population ever hears about it, let alone uses it.  an African kid will never accept Bitcoin as digital gold as he can't touch it, feel it, carry it in his pocket, weigh it, or wear it.  thus, he will need to be able to transact with it and be able to analyze that it does in fact not increase in supply.  we know that he will have the tools to do this as fiber optic lines are being laid across Africa as we speak.  $10 Android phones are now available and soon 21 and phone makers look prepared to practically give away mining phones to grab market share.  but they have to be able to transact with Bitcoin in a reliable, cheap manner.  only then will they appreciate Bitcoin as a gold substitute.

[Reggie Middleton]

Veritaseum uses only bitcoin, and subsists completely on the bitcoin blockchain. It is the only bitcoin wallet system that can trade simple and complex value structures without using non-bitcoin tokens, alt coins, sidechains or alternative blockchains. It can trade the value of over 45,000 tickers in all asset classes, from major exchanges from all around the world. At it’s essence, Veritaseum is a hyper-intelligent Bitcoin wallet “system” that is able to create and interpret smart contracts through the blockchain. It coordinates with an Oracle to gain access to conventional, physical and legacy financial data and information and uses it to price, value, trade and settle OTC, P2P financial instruments - all in BTC.

The Veritaseum platform, using nothing but pure bitcoin with no tokens or alternative internal currencies, moves the value of all that he mentioned plus much more (over 45k tickers), with absolutely no counterparty risk on a fully autonomous basis using smart contracts based solely on bitcoin script

It might be worth pointing out in these two posts.

Post 1 - it uses an Oracle
Post 2 - claims no counterparty risk.

A trusted oracle is a 3rd party.  Is this not a form of counterparty risk?

No, an oracle doesn't represent counterparty risk. If anything it may expose you to execution risk. Counterparty risk is the risk that your counterparty (other side of the trade) reneges or fails to deliver as agreed. That's not possible in our system because we make everyone face the blockchain as a Counterparty via preprogrammed scripts of coin that is used to fully collateralize (and/or overcollateralize) the contracts. At an absolute minimum, each contract is collateralized 100%, after all fees. I'm writing this on my phone so there may be typos.